My niece said she wanted a Niall Horan cake for her birthday.
“Who?” I asked in confusion.
“You know, Niall Horan. One Direction,” she replied.
“Who?” I asked again still not understanding.
She gave me a look of comic disbelief and proceeded to give me all the details of the most recent boy-band, teenage heart-throbs: Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry, & Louis. She dragged me to her room and in the week since my last visit she had redecorated her walls. Gone was poor Justin and in his place was Niall.
Ooookayyyyy. That was a fast. But who am I to question tween love.
So I got busy searching the internet for “One Direction” themed cakes and found a few with a concert stage theme that I liked. A lot of the cakes had hand molded band members, but due to limited time and mediocre talent I decided to just buy some One Direction plastic figures to go on top of my cake.
They figures I found are actually very cute. They are only about 3 inches tall and they look like bobble heads, but the heads do not move. But even without the bobble they are still adorable.
To go with the concert stage theme, I decided to include a backdrop that would look like a large silhouette of the band members. I printed out the silhouette and then used the paper copy to make a duplicate version out of Satin Ice Gum Paste.
I later used edible spray paint to color it black. I guess I could have just tinted the gum paste black, but I already had the paint so I figure I would give that method a try. The paint worked okay, but it was delicate and easily smudged. The silhouette was also very fragile so I glued it (with white chocolate) to a piece of square, white gum paste.
I also cut out gum paste British phone booths to be part of the backdrop. Who remembers Dr. Who and the Tardis (although his' was blue). The white gum paste phone booths (and a "1D" logo) were sprayed with red edible paint.
The white, cream cheese icing look a little stark, so I painted that silver. Guess I went a little crazy with the spray paint.
Here is the half-finished cake chilling in the refrigerator. The cake is Red Velvet and the frosting is Cream Cheese. I had to keep the cake chilled because of the frosting kept melting. Gotta love New Orleans in August where temps top 95 and the humidity is 110%.
The multicolored “crowd” in front of the stage is just a paper cutout. I was going to make it out of gum paste, but as usual I ran out of time. Even after all these years decorating cakes I still can’t predicate how long it is going to take to prepare and assemble the decorations. I always seem to run short of time.
Here is the finished product. I wish I would have put Niall on the cake with the rest of the guys and tilted the 1D logo up so you could see it better. But c'est la vie. That's life.
And sadly this is what happened to all that time and effort. It is frightening that it only takes a few seconds to destroy what took hours to create.
But at least the birthday girl got to keep the little 1D figurines. She added them to the 1D shrine that she calls her bedroom.
Happy Birthday, Amanda.
